Software Engineering Advisor - Java Focused, AI Enabled

Introduction

A career in IBM Consulting is built on long-term client relationships and close collaboration worldwide. You’ll work with leading companies across industries, helping them shape their hybrid cloud and AI journeys. With support from our strategic partners, robust IBM technology, and Red Hat, you’ll have the tools to drive meaningful change and accelerate client impact. At IBM Consulting, curiosity fuels success. You’ll be encouraged to challenge the norm, explore new ideas, and create innovative solutions that deliver real results. Our culture of growth and empathy focuses on your long-term career development while valuing your unique skills and experiences.

In this role, you'll work in one of our IBM Consulting Client Innovation Centers (Delivery Centers), where we deliver deep technical and industry expertise to a wide range of public and private sector clients around the world. Our delivery centers offer our clients locally based skills and technical expertise to drive innovation and adoption of new technology.

Your role and responsibilities

The Software Engineering Advisor is a senior individual contributor responsible for designing, developing, and guiding the delivery of complex, enterprise-scale software solutions. This role brings deep expertise in Java-based application development while applying emerging AI capabilities to enhance automation, quality, and delivery efficiency across the software development lifecycle.

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

The Software Engineering Advisor is a senior individual contributor responsible for designing, developing, and guiding the delivery of complex, enterprise-scale software solutions. This role brings deep expertise in Java-based application development while applying emerging AI capabilities to enhance automation, quality, and delivery efficiency across the software development lifecycle.

Operating with a high degree of autonomy, the Advisor influences solution design, technical direction, and engineering best practices. While this role does not carry direct people management responsibilities, it plays a critical role in technical leadership, mentoring, and cross-team collaboration. The ideal candidate is a seasoned Java engineer with applied experience integrating AI-enabled components into production systems.

Key Responsibilities

Software Engineering Leadership

• Serve as a technical advisor on complex initiatives, contributing to system design, solution architecture, and implementation strategy.
• Design, develop, and maintain enterprise-grade Java applications that meet standards for performance, security, scalability, and reliability.
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to engineers across teams, promoting engineering excellence and consistency.

Java Application Development (Primary Focus)

• Lead development of backend services and APIs using Core Java, Spring Boot, RESTful services, and SQL.
• Translate complex business and technical requirements into well-designed, maintainable software solutions.
• Participate in design reviews, code reviews, and architectural discussions to ensure alignment with enterprise standards.

AI-Enabled Engineering (Secondary Focus)

• Contribute to the design and integration of AI-enabled capabilities within existing Java applications.
• Develop or integrate Python-based AI services, including:
• Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) workflows
• LLM-powered APIs and supporting services
• Embedding and semantic retrieval patterns
• Apply AI responsibly and pragmatically to improve automation, developer productivity, and quality outcomes.

Automation & Quality Engineering

• Apply a strong understanding of automation and quality engineering concepts, including API automation and intelligent testing strategies.
• Partner with QA, automation engineers, and platform teams to improve reliability and test coverage across systems.

Problem Solving & Technical Analysis

• Analyze highly complex problems spanning multiple systems and technologies.
• Troubleshoot and resolve issues across Java services, automation frameworks, and AI-enabled components.
• Identify root causes and implement sustainable, production-ready solutions.

Collaboration & Communication

• Collaborate closely with architects, product partners, QA, data engineers, and business stakeholders.
• Communicate technical designs, tradeoffs, and risks clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Operate effectively within a large-scale, matrixed, and highly regulated enterprise environment.

Experience

• Strong years of professional software development experience in enterprise environments.
• Strong years of hands-on Java development experience, including:
• Core Java
• Spring Boot
• RESTful API design
• SQL and relational databases
• 1+ years of applied AI or data-driven software engineering experience, including:
• Python-based development
• Working knowledge of RAG concepts, LLM integration, or AI-assisted services
• Integrating AI components into production applications (beyond proof-of-concept work)

Technical Skills

• Java (Core Java, Spring Boot)
• RESTful APIs and JSON processing
• SQL and relational databases
• Git and CI/CD pipelines
• Maven and modern IDEs (IntelliJ/Eclipse)

Working Knowledge

• Python for AI-enabled or supporting services
• Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures
• Embeddings, semantic search, and AI integration patterns
• Cloud platforms such as AWS or OpenShift
• Containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Selenium or other test automation frameworks

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Experience integrating AI services into Java based enterprise systems

• Familiarity with vector databases or semantic retrieval platforms

• Exposure to AI assisted developer tools and modern SDLC automation practices

• Proficiency with Microsoft Office tools (Word, Excel, Visio, PowerPoint).

• Experience working within large, regulated organizations is preferred.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Consulting is IBM’s consulting and global professional services business, with market leading capabilities in business and technology transformation. With deep expertise in many industries, we offer strategy, experience, technology, and operations services to many of the most innovative and valuable companies in the world. Our people are focused on accelerating our clients’ businesses through the power of collaboration. We believe in the power of technology responsibly used to help people, partners and the planet.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

All our positions are eligible for people with disabilities PwD or rehabilitated.

Important Notice to Candidates

IBM does not charge any fees or request any kind of payment from candidates to participate in its recruitment processes. This includes, but is not limited to, application fees, costs for sending documents, or any payment related to the application or interviews. If you receive any request for payment in the name of IBM, we strongly recommend that you do not proceed and report it immediately through the company’s official channels